To:
President Dr. Garnett S. Stokes
Provost Dr. James Holloway
Dean of Graduate Studies Dr. Julie Coonrod
Dean of Students Ms. Nasha Torrez

Graduate students are facing a drastic reduction in our ability to conduct our research and teaching work in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. As graduate students, we have been working hard to ensure that our undergraduate students are informed when it comes to the day-to-day challenges that these times bring us. We continue to be their first point of contact as they struggle to complete their courses and make sense of their new reality. Along with this added pressure, the lack of access to library resources, archives, laboratory spaces, office and work space, meeting rooms, strong internet connections, and face-to-face interactions with our advisors means that we can anticipate substantial delays in our ability to complete degree requirements. Students caring for ill loved ones, those with children, those without an adequate or safe space for a home office, students with pre-existing health conditions or who are immunocompromised, and international students are all at extreme disadvantage. Students are also at heightened risk of losing time due to their own illness. We appreciate that the University of New Mexico has extended our time to degree timeline by one semester, but we are concerned that without additional provisions, this will be insufficient in helping graduate students overcome the difficulties present due to COVID-19. 

We would like to draw particular attention to graduate students who are currently in the dissertation phase. In addition to the difficulties faced by the change in their own lives, such as a decrease in productivity due to childcare responsibilities, inability to work in or access the library and laboratory spaces, etc., it has also become increasingly difficult to receive timely feedback or schedule consultative meetings with faculty members, who are also overwhelmed. While classes have been restructured in numerous ways to account for the difficulties of COVID-19, there has not been a similar shift for students in the prospectus and dissertation phase, even as these students are forced to alter their dissertations to account for new field and lab work limitations. We are additionally concerned that these students, many of whom are now or will soon be hitting typical departmental time limits for funding, will now be faced with a situation in which the semesters that they would have defended a prospectus or dissertation are pushed back substantially, into a time where they will no longer be funded (through no fault of their own). This, we worry, will create severe financial difficulties for these students, either causing them to go into debt, extend their time to degree even further as they are forced to seek external work or compete for increasingly competitive external funding, or never complete their degree as these complications become too difficult to overcome.

We would also like to highlight that students at all levels already expect to be facing severe financial difficulties over the summer, as planned sources of funding and work have disappeared or become impossible due to the COVID-19 crisis. Many students do not qualify for the federal economic impact payments, and are also not eligible to file for unemployment benefits. The university is in a unique position to help students in this situation, whether through emergency scholarship funds or increased assistantship allotments. Many students would be more than willing to help with research on the impact of COVID-19, for example, and there are new grants being offered for which students from a range of programs could be helpful in securing and bringing to fruition. 

To ensure students are given every opportunity to complete their degrees amid COVID-19, UNM graduate students are asking for the following:

1. Funding extensions: We are requesting a one-year funding extension, with tuition, for all currently funded graduate students. 
2. Health care extensions: Along with the one-year funding extension for graduate students, we are also requesting a one-year extension on health care. This is especially important during a global health crisis.
3. Time-to-degree extensions: Due to the reduction in productivity that many students are facing, we request that the degree timeline of students be extended by one academic year.
4. Summer emergency scholarships and funding streams: Make every effort to increase the ability of students to make it through the summer financially, whether through emergency scholarships, assistantships, or a combination of the two. 


Graduate students are a vital part of the scholarly community, through our research, teaching, and our service. However, in order for us to continue being a part of and contribute to our scholarly communities, we need to be given a fair chance to succeed. In this period of precarity and distress, extensions of funding, health care, and degree timelines are critical for the well-being of graduate students. We realize that the University of New Mexico has an obligation to make important decisions about our future in the face of a crisis of this magnitude. We ask that such decisions be made with the necessary consideration for graduate students who, today, face more precarity and vulnerability than ever before.